Stephen C. Carlson reflected on his co-blog Hypotyposeis about why not to blog too much about pre-publication ideas. I had given it some thought too, though I don’t have a book in the works or anything. This quote here articulates some things that I have been thinking even as I try to figure out what kind of reflection I want to do here at kata ton biblon:

Sometimes to do an idea justice it requires a fuller treatment than a blog can conveniently provide. If I like the idea enough to think about publication, why should I make a bad first impression with a feeble blog posting? Also, as they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and sometimes a blog is better suited for making the claim than laying out the evidence. On the other hand, blogging it first might be a better to go if I am exploring a topic, perhaps for the first time, or chasing leads that may or may not go anywhere. In the second case, there may be more evidence than actual analysis, but in the process of playing with sources on the blog sometimes a publishable idea may pop up.

I can resonate that blogging is not particularly well-suited for “laying out the evidence.” That is something that I felt as I was trying to write my women in ministry paper on my blog. It just seemed like too much information and too hard to split into separate posts. So for that one, I found it easier to make it into a more coherent paper first and then convert some of it into blog posts after the fact. It is a little bit different, as I’m not planning on publishing it.

Being a grad student, though, I feel like blogging is a fantastic avenue to throw my thoughts out there into the great void, “chasing leads that may or may not go anywhere.” Because grad school is all about chasing things and not knowing where you’ll end up.